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Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Our ever expanding digital era has made pornography more available than ever before. People have access to porn on their computers, iPads, phones and social media at an alarming rate.

Former 'Bay Watch' star, Pamela Anderson, recently caught the attention of the world's press by making this bold statement;

"We must educate ourselves and our children to understand that porn is for losers."

Anderson, once a regular Playboy centerfold, is now a parent and went on to echo what many Christian groups and research studies have been saying for some considerable time, that porn is "a boring, wasteful and dead-end outlet for people too lazy to reap the ample rewards of healthy sexuality."

And most poignantly, she says. "I'm afraid the world will forget how to make love because of porn."

Author, evangelist and speaker Josh McDowell has welcomed this issue being highlighted by Pamela Anderson and the media coverage it has triggered. He believes, "the Christian Church is now actively challenged to confront porn."

"I would personally say from all my knowledge that pornography's probably the greatest threat to the cause of Christ in the history of the world," McDowell told CBN News. "It's that serious. While we're out trying to win the world through Christ - pastors preaching to the community - pornography is coming right in the back door."

McDowell insists detailed academic research from the recently published Barna Report, fully backs up Pamela Anderson's claims, and shows the pornography epidemic is far worse than originally thought.

Perhaps the most sobering finding from the study is the reality of how accepted viewing porn has become in our culture today, particularly amongst teens and young adults.

Fifty-four percent of adults 25 and older believe viewing porn is wrong. Only 32 percent of teens and young adults (13-24) say looking at porn is wrong. In addition, according to the Barna Report, only one in 10 teens and one in 20 young adults say they talk with their friends about porn "in a disapproving way."

Four times as many male adults 25 and older use porn than female adults in the same age category (47 percent to 12 percent).

Pamela Anderson may be comforted to know that practicing Christians are more than three times LESS likely to use porn than other teens and adults (13 percent compared to 42 percent).

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*Barna Group is a visionary research and resource company located in Ventura, California. Started in 1984, the firm is widely considered to be a leading research organisation focused on the intersection of faith and culture.

Tuesday, 3 January 2017

Pope Francis has criticised media organisations that focus on gossip, negativity and promote fake news as a means of smear people in public life. Spreading false information was “probably the greatest damage that the media can do”, the pontiff told the Belgian Catholic weekly 'Tertio'. It is a sin to defame people, he added.

Using emotive terminology, Pope Francis said that journalists and the media must avoid falling into “coprophilia” - an abnormal interest in excrement. Those reading or watching such stories risked behaving like coprophagics, people who eat faeces, he added.

Good news and truth is important and reading it is an antidote to the harmful propaganda of negativity.